If you love honey and want to discover its flavours and varieties, this is your shop in Las Rozas in Madrid, where you will find more than 30 varieties of national and international honey: heather,rosemary, manuka, loquat and many more.

Hunter harvesting the honey with hallucinogenic effects from Nepal

To the east of Nepal, a select group of Kulung hunters climb cliffs with ladders made only of bamboo rope to heights of up to 100 meters in order to collect this type of honey with hallucinogenic effects. They keep these hives and their bees at bay by means of smoke from the burning of grasses, which is raised to these heights using poles. At that very moment, when the hunters are climbing their stairs, risking their lives to collect the honey.

These feats that make this group of honey hunters have been screened in the documentary “The last honey hunter” that could be translated as the last honey hunter. This documentary will be released in 2018 and is currently being shown at numerous festivals.

Video 1: Behind the cameras of the documentary of the last honey hunter

The filmmaking team hired professional climbers such as film producers and photographer Renan Ozturk to make the documentary. This team was able to shoot the documentary from above, from the cliffs, securing themselves with harnesses, while the honey hunters did it with their traditional bamboo ladders.

According to a member of the recording crew, when I looked at one of the honey hunters, the oldest of them all, Mauli, I felt somewhat overwhelmed, as he was at that height with only a bamboo ladder without being harmed by the bees.

“Depending on the time of year, giant Himalayan bees produce different types of honey,” says Mark Synnott, who was also part of the film crew and who also reported on these hunters for National Geographic magazine. He added: “In the spring season, these bees collect nectar from flowers that contain toxins with psychotropic effects, with them they create this honey with hallucinogenic effects that causes an effect of madness. this honey is also locally called red honey.

Vice Magazine 2016

David Caprara, for Vice magazine in 2016, who witnessed the collection of this honey by these Nepalese hunters, said: “I consumed two tablespoons of this honey, amount recommended by honey hunters. After about 15 minutes, I began to feel in my body, much like consuming other herbs, as my body was cooling, moving this feeling from back to head and down through my back. A penetrating sensation that was both freezing and at the same time hot that was installed in my stomach, a sensation that lasted for hours” He also did not say that these sensations can be more intense if the dose is higher.

A local merchant described to Synnott one of his experiences when he consumed a large amount of this red honey. First, one feels the need that the body needs to purge, either through defecation or vomiting. After purging, one experiences alternating sensations of light and darkness, where in some moments one can see and in others not. Another effect is that one cannot move, even though one is completely lucid. He added that this high can last up to a day.

Honey used as a disinfectant

Locals in Nepal use small doses of this type of honey with hallucinogenic effects as a disinfectant, to heal wounds, constipation and to relieve pain. This honey can only be found on the black market and its price ranges between 150 euros per kilo, according to Synnott. This high value is what makes these hunters who continue to defy death to collect this honey found in accesses of cliffs so complicated.

However, these honey hunters, who are following a path of environmental sustainability, could disappear. This documentary shows us how no one is found to replace the hunter Mauli, as young people are less and less interested in the countryside and beekeeping, all young people wanting to leave the countryside and move to the cities.

In addition, photographer Andres Newery, who travelled to Nepal in 2012, observed how the giant bee populations of the Himalayas are disappearing because of tourism and government policies that reward hunters who do not collect honey in a sustainable way. Therefore, this hallucinogenic honey could disappear over time.

Source

Business Insider magazine. This hallucinogenic honey is so priced that hunters scale cliffs and confront swarms of bees to get it. http://www.businessinsider.com/ August 27, 2017.